Director of South Dakota Legislative Research Council resigns

October 24, 2023

John Hult

PIERRE, S.D.–The South Dakota Legislature’s Executive Board accepted the resignation of the state’s Legislative Research Council (LRC) director on Monday.

Reed Holwegner, a McLaughlin native, was appointed director in the spring of 2020 after several years working in a similar office in Kansas. In an interview with the National Conference of State Legislatures published in January of 2022, Holwegner said he’d covered 16 sessions in Kansas and eight in South Dakota, the latter of which included a stint with the LRC in Pierre in the early 2000s.

LRC staffers collect data on behalf of legislators and help them write bills. They also produce white papers on the impact of bills that become law, and cost estimates for proposals that will impact the state budget.

John Hult with South Dakota Searchlight reports that lawmakers on the committee voted to accept Holwegner’s resignation in a short public session after a closed-door meeting, then voted to appoint LRC Chief Research and Legal Analyst John McCullough as interim director.

Shortly thereafter, Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, R-Watertown, moved to “authorize the executive committee to work out any severance termination issues” with the former director. House Speaker Hugh Bartels, R-Watertown, called a vote on the motion “to work out termination severance and other issues,” which received unanimous support from the executive board.

There was no discussion on the reason or reasons for Holwegner’s resignation.